About the Exhibition

Afarin Rahmanifar’s work explores the lives, histories, and resilience of women through her experience as an Iranian American woman shaped by exile. Using fragmented anatomical forms, Persian visual traditions, and the women of the Shahnameh, she examines how memory and cultural inheritance shape identity and belonging. 

Through painting, drawing, collage, textile, and mixed media, she layers and reconstructs the female body as an act of remembrance and reclamation— honoring women whose stories have been overlooked or silenced. 

About the Artist

Afarin Rahmanifar is an Iranian American mixed-media artist, curator, educator, and Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Eastern Connecticut State University, where she has taught since 2013. Born in Iran and displaced after the 1979 Revolution, her work is shaped by themes of memory, exile, identity, and transformation. Prior to her current appointment, she served as a Lecturer in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut and in the Department of Art & Art History at Eastern Connecticut State University from 1997 to 2013.

Working across painting, drawing, mixed media, installation, printmaking, animation, and virtual reality production, Rahmanifar creates layered visual narratives that explore the female body as a site of memory, resilience, and cultural inheritance. Her practice draws upon Persian visual traditions, mythology, anatomical imagery, and material experimentation to investigate the intersections of personal and collective histories. Rahmanifar has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in New York City, Paris, Greece, China, India, and throughout the United States. Her work has been featured at venues including SOHO20 Gallery, Carter Burden Gallery, Two Coats of Paint, Five Points Gallery, the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts, Towson University, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Juniata College, and the University of Connecticut. She has received numerous CSU/AAUP Research Grants and artist residencies, including the Artists Association of Nantucket, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, and the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Greece.

Her work is included in public and private collections, including the Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut and Eastern Connecticut State University. Alongside her studio practice, Rahmanifar curates exhibitions and develops interdisciplinary projects that engage questions of cultural memory, storytelling, and the representation of women’s experiences across histories and traditions.